I wish I knew what happened to all the pressing equipment that got abandoned in Australia in the mid-90's!

Gathering dust most probably. The trick is to find them. Maybe there are 2 pressing houses in Australia, but there might be some small labels that do have one. I remember that around here, there was a specialised shop that got themselves an LP press and made during a few years LP's themselves. They stopped long ago, but there might be others. The yellow pages and a phone might be your best bet.

you mean you suspect that some manufacturers are sneaky, and graph the frequency response so that the peak of the loudest frequency is at +3dB, therefore the highest 'frequency response' becomes the point where the curve crosses -3dB?